💯 a reflection indeed
Also, Community Relays don't have to be paid, they just have to discriminate. Prices are just really universal (and profitable) tools of discrimination.
Discussion
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Everything is paid by someone. It's more a question of who pays and where they get the funds. I pay for my relays, but I don't let most people use them.
It's more public/private.
Yes, I mean paid for in part in some way by those who use a particular relay. Either by virtue of being an important person to the relay owner who covers their part financially, or by a monetary fee that is large enough to filter out undesirable people.
We can end up with a segmented userbase with relay discrimination of some sort, which is why I asked if that's what you think will happen. I don't think this would be a bad thing. I would certainly spend SATs to not see a bunch of thirsty zap seekers posting nothing of value.
But this can also be partially solved by clients only showing me content from those I explicitly select.
Maybe we'll see this in a combination of ways.
Discoverability would be a challenge though.
I think you underestimate how many people are reluctant to write because they know the entire world can just stare at them, like they're in a fishbowl.
AUTH relays are like Telegram groups or Slack teams, but with Nostr functionality.
No, I just didn't fully understand what you were talking about. 'Hanging out in cozier spaces' is a bit vague, which is why I asked if you meant paid relays. I assume now that single-use anons means people who only use the social media use case. I didn't get that at first. I see myself using it in multiple ways. For public and private use cases, if privacy ever actually happens (I don't know enough about Nostr to know if any of it is private or not).
It's pretty cool if posting on a particular relay can be totally private though. I'd definitely be interested in using that with people I'm closer to in real life.
Well, they're paid for by someone. That isn't really my main point. Being allowed on the relays ultimately requires some form of payment, whether in social status, meeting some other arbitrary requirement, or money. Otherwise, there would be no discernable discrimination and we'd be right back to the starting point. Therefore, 'paid relay' is just a simplification that means limited access to some people meeting some standard set by the relay owner. Yes, some relays can be paid in full by an owner with no restrictions on who uses it, but I don't think that's the spirit of the post.
I should say that isn't the spirit of what I added to the post.